Your heart is giddy with excitement just thinking about it. You can already see yourself painting the town red this Christmas with enough cash to spare – seeing as you were a bit frugal the past year.
You know this time; you can finally buy your children the expensive gifts they have so harassed you for. And your spouse? This time you’ll spare no expense in making sure you get something he/she will value for a long time.
Then you remember the list of family members who already started sending you text messages praying for all to be well with you and ending as usual with “Anything you can send to us, we will appreciate” – you sigh but a mental calculation shows you that fitting them in shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. After all, your 13th-month month bonus, leave allowance, salary and small extra from your side hustle will come in soon.
Finally, your budget on how to spend all the cash that you’ll make as 2021 ends is ready. You take a step back to study your masterpiece. Then a nagging thought comes. You silently wonder how you’ll pay your children’s school fees in January especially since that month ‘can be long for Africa’.
You also wonder if you should invest a portion of your 13th month and re-size your budget to curtail the Christmas expenses– but that boisterous voice within shouts ‘YOLO bro/sis’ and you smile and nod – yes, you only live once (YOLO).
But that smile quickly disappears when you remembered how the voice had constantly deceived you the previous years and made you splurge your bonuses only to enter the New Year broke and empty.
When that happened, instead of YOLO, the voice spat ‘O.Y.O’ (On your own).
Immediately, you knew you had to be wiser this time. So, you re-adjust your budget to include investing. Everyone will still get their gifts and handouts, albeit reasonably – it’s the thought that counts right?
You’ll still get to paint the town red – maybe a lighter shade of red. But most importantly, your investment balance will increase and next year when everyone is complaining about the financial drought, you’ll be smiling.
